Nereus's Search
by Prophe-Cass
Summary: The Deep TV Show Fanfiction. Nereus made one too many mistakes one too many times. Each time left him more and more desperate to find The Chosen One.


**I fluctuated the ages a bit in this. As in, instead of two years older than Ant, Fontaine is three/four years older, and Alpheus, instead of three years older than Fontaine, he's seven years older.**

**Don't blame me! *Smoke bomb***

**(:)**

Nereus was a family friend of the Nektons. Both branches of the family tree, in fact.

He looked after William and his distant cousins Mira and Maya when they were young and watched from a distance as they grew up.

Maya, the youngest of all three of them, stayed single all her life, while the other two grew to marry and have children.

Mira had her son first, a boy named Alpheus. Seven years later, William and his wife, Kaiko, had a daughter.

Nereus was quick to jump to the assumption that Alpheus was The Chosen One, keeping an eye on the boy for his first nine years.

Finally, he approached Alpheus and spoke to him, tutoring him for a full year about the Chronicle of the Deep. He was determined that this boy would be the one to snag it from the sea creature, the Dragon of the Deep, in fourteen years when the gorge opened.

But when he was putting Alpheus through one of the tests, the boy turned on him and betrayed him, leaving him for dead.

Nereus barely escaped with the help of his fellow guardians, remembering the other line of Nektons for the first time in what felt like years. He was determined not to make the same mistake again, fixating his entire attention on them.

At the time he found the couple, they were living on land. They were taking university classes, fanatically studying the ocean; Kaiko aiming for her goal of becoming an expert submarine pilot and marine biologist, and her husband studying to become a man well versed in the ways of the sea; familiar with machines and languages of the deep, and able to study the migrations of different sea creatures.

Shortly afterwards, he discovered they had a daughter who was usually babysat while they studied; little three-year old Fontaine.

He knew that, before she was born, the family had been divers, learning the basics of deep-sea exploration and becoming cadets for the Worldwide Ocean Authority.

In fact, Fontaine had even been born on a submarine, without any doctors to help her along.

Her history with the sea, even being so young, intrigued Nereus. He watched her curiously, sometimes even convincing some of the other guardians to step in as a babysitter for her.

The more he watched, the more he was sure that she was The Chosen One.

She was clever, cautious, thought things through before she acted even as a toddler.

The more Nereus observed and heard, the more he grew to admire her.

The only real problem was that Fontaine wasn't always patient. When things were cryptic, she would grow frustrated and demand to know the answers right away.

Even simple riddles rubbed her the wrong way.

One day, news reached Nereus's ears that rattled him to the bone.

Fontaine had been talking to one of her babysitters – a guardian in disguise – when she revealed that soon she was to have a little sibling. She hoped it'd be a boy, because then her daddy wouldn't complain about being outnumbered by the females.

Nereus realized that she couldn't possibly be The Chosen One, for no longer would she be the youngest Nekton. Once again, Nereus was wrong about everything and it was thrown back in his face.

Relief came, however, when he learned from another source that Kaiko and William only planned to have two children, in contrary to five or so children, as Nereus had been worried they'd want.

Despite the assurance that it was likely this child would most likely be The Chosen One, Nereus worried that he would be wrong once again..

Swearing an oath, Nereus promised he wouldn't approach the babe until he was absolutely sure that he was The Chosen One. He wouldn't approach the Nektons at all until he was sure of it.

He waited a long time.


End file.
